Top of the League was British soccer manager game concentrating on English divisions. As usual we started as new manager in the lower division and fight our way up to the top. It does not sound too original, nor interesting, but Top of the League was in fact quite interesting and creators had different approach to the basic part of the game.
When you take a look at the screens of Top of the League they look messy and overloaded with data, which is unfortunately not far from truth - you do not only get the summary statistics of the game for the whole team, but also for each of the players. In their details you will find their past career summary, current season, plenty of parameters - everything you need to make a decision. Similar story is with match engine - you get the description of every bit of action that takes place on the field, you see the summary for the team, you see rating and fitness level.
All of it, all the details and data, are even more than you need to know, which quickly becomes a problem with the game - too much information is killing the fun. Which was a shame, because Top of the League had in fact quite few options unavailable in other games, f.e. very specific options to set the team formation, a lot of staff to hire, foreign transfer markets, bank loans, etc. But at the same time it took a lot of time to play a single match and some of the information made the game too complicated to gather the attention that it should.
Top of the League gameplay video
